Once again, Cyril Ho and his team of handsome French chefs and comely servers put up a magnificent feast, this time for 24 of us, an eclectic group comprised of visitors from Europe, TWA students, alumni and friends. The open kitchen of Le Comptoir, Neihu, was a performance platform for wave after wave of beautifully plated dishes, beginning with oysters on the half-shell, escargot on croissant pastry… other delicacies too, and then came Rousseau-like salads for everyone, and on to the mains.
Christmas is one of those cyclic rituals that always evokes nostalgia, and I found myself last night sometimes disappearing down hallways of time… My oldest memories of Christmas Dinner all revolve around my maternal Grandmother, who was the matriarch of our family and a fine cook. She was a tea totaller herself, but she allowed the adults one small glass of sherry before dinner. We were 3 big families with lots of young children and an assortment of unmarried relations. I remember bright green aspic salads, orange sweet potatoes, bowl after bowl of vegetables all passed around, and my Uncle Don carving the turkey, my father carving the ham. Christmas in Taipei will never have quite the same familial energy, but we can still throw a good party. Everyone had fun right away, with magnums of Duval Champagne and dozens of bottles of wine.
Whatever Cyril did with the turkey, it was perfectly moist and tender, the best I’ve ever had. I asked him his secret, and he relied simply and sweetly, “Cooked with passion at the right temperature and especially rested at least 30min before cutting,” which is not much to go on, but it was delicious. The only thing missing was crispy skin.
Roast Turkey is a fine old holiday tradition in Canada, and I can attest that over the decades my family has studied the full range of methods for roasting these giant but recalcitrant birds. The enemy is dryness, and stuffing is supposed to help retain moisture. Recipes for turkey stuffing abound, including whole lemons, but stuffing doesn’t always save the moisture, so my brothers and sisters have tried covering the bird with foil, roasting on an elaborate apparatus that holds the bird upside down until the last hour when you rotate it upright to brown the skin. A few times my brother has deep fried a 9kg turkey in a giant cauldron of oil heated over open flame, a technical and perilous undertaking. But Cyril outdid them all. I’ll have to find out how.
Instead of the traditional smoked ham, Cyril prepared pork shoulder, and it too was fabulous, just a little smokey and beautifully marbled with fat. The Brussels Sprouts were the tiniest I’ve ever seen, and everything else was delightful.
Our dear friends had just arrived from Vienna, and they stood up well despite the time adjustment. Their boys are 6 and 7 years old, and I began teaching them how to open wine bottles with a sommelier knife. The hard part seems to be getting the screw started into the center of the cork. The younger boy, Virgil, was keen to pour wine for everyone. At six years old , he’s not very tall, and seeing him with a bottle of champagne heading purposefully toward the dining table was quite disconcerting.
Naseem invited a table-full of students and alumni, and they all brought Austrian wine in honor of our guests from Austria. The wine was good, but in retrospect it was a bit like bringing pemmican to honor visiting Inuit at a dinner in Toronto. The Austrians found it amusing. Oh well.
We have quite a collection of Blaufrankisch from Our friends’ winery, Grozerwein, in Eisenberg, and the party gave us a good reason to open some bottles and see how they’re doing. The 2014 Szapary was beautiful, definitely coming into its own after 10 years, (7 of those sitting very still in our cellar). It had luscious black fruit, just a dash of pepper and silky understated tannins.
Our history of feasting with Cyril Ho goes back more than 10 years, and we look forward to ten more, no doubt in venues as different as Le Comptoir is from Origines, Cyril’s first restaurant in Taipei that we all still remember so fondly.
Merry Christmas everyone.
